It Takes a Wilderness to Declutter Your Soul
It Takes a Wilderness to Declutter Your Soul
Matthew 4:1-11
Christian Community Presbyterian Church
Bowie, Maryland
1 March 2020
Listen to the sermon
Lent is a lot like New Year’s. Both begin the day after the night before. Mardi Gras is just a ramped-up New Year’s Eve. Instead of holding glasses of champagne and singing “Auld Lang Syne,” we eat King Cake washed down with Cajun cocktails. Both New Year’s and Lent occasion a lot of resolutions, nearly all of which quickly get broken. So, with only four Lent days behind us, has your Lenten discipline fared as well as your January get-fit resolution?
Last Sunday Dick Neff talked about giving things up or taking things on for the Lenten season. Like Dick’s friend who gave up parsnips and turnips, a child at the dinner table told her mother, “These are vegetables. You don’t want me to eat something I’ve given up for Lent, do you?”
Dick urged us to take up something new for Lent. I’m all for that, but taking on something new is easier said than done. You have to fit it into an already filled schedule. If your glass is full and you proceed to put more liquid into it, you are going to make a mess. And after you have made a mess several times, you think, why bother.
We all know our closets and drawers. They are stuffed, we can’t put anything more into them. But we want the sweater we saw at Macy’s or the shirt from Eddie Bauer. Consultants who work with hoarders say that a person has to set limits. If you buy a new sweater or a shirt, you have to get rid of an old one. It is a discipline.
So, let’s say that for Lent you decide to read the Bible thirty minutes every day. Since your days are already full, you will have to find that half hour by giving something up, perhaps by not watching “The Daily Show” or by setting a timer for how long you read your Instagram and Twitter feeds. Can you do that more than a few days in a row? If you are like me, that’s more discipline than I’m willing to give.
Whether you give up something for Lent or add something to your life, you do it in order to make room for Jesus. Lent becomes a forty-day period of soul cleaning to make space for him. That seems appropriate when we realize that we spend over 300 days a year stuffing Jesus into the dim recesses of our lives in the same way that we stuff our drawers and closets. Who of us likes to clean, who of us likes to throw things away.
Lent is a time to actively embrace the trials and sufferings of Jesus. The more we think about what he accomplished on our behalf, the more we can be effective in being true to the faith we claim. One of Dick Neff’s suggestions was to read and reread the Sermon on the Mount until it becomes a living part of who we are. When we are more effective in living faithfully, we can be more effective in sharing our faith.
Emilie Griffin, in Small Surrenders, suggests that one spiritual practice for embracing Christ’s trials and sufferings is “to reflect on the weight of our own life choices, the constraints of living that hem us in.”(1) Her thought is that instead of taking on burdens for Lent, we can be transformed by examining the burdens we already carry.
One of our burdens, says Griffin, is the everydayness of things. There are chores to be done, errands to run, text messages to answer. She cites the example of Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner. He was discouraged by the daily slog. He referred to his soul as a warehouse where burdens were dumped every day. (Think of the local self-serve mini-storage unit). Rahner says that life is a hard journey of duties and obligations. This warehouse of accumulating duties became a desert for him, a wilderness where he got lost and searched for the Lord. That’s ironic, as Rahner lived a relentless life of theological scholarship and study. He became overwhelmed to the point of losing sight of Jesus in the “warehouse” of his soul.
In our most blissful moments of conviction, we would like to be able to drop everything to be with Jesus, to share a pot of coffee or a bottle of wine with him, anything to absorb his presence into our lives. But we, like Rahner, are hemmed in by everydayness. We are tied to our work, our schedule, our obligations, our immediate community. Jesus has to come to us where we are because we will never get to where he is.
Jesus told his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering. He had to be rejected by the scribes and elders who were the religious gatekeepers of his day. He had to suffer and be put to death. Our little burdens and annoyances pale in comparison with the burdens he bore. Jesus called us to self-discipline and self-denial, yet at the same time he told us not to worry, not to be anxious, not to be afraid. It is a hard discipline for us to accept our lives with all their constraints while we seek to move with him as he takes up the cross.
If we are going to accept our burdens and deal responsibly with the everydayness of our lives which anchors us in place like a ball and chain, we have to evaluate our priorities:
We have heard all before, but have we really listened? Or did it just go in one ear and out the other. My father used to say that the reason we have a brain was to catch the stuff on the way between our ears.
If listening was easy, if evaluating our priorities was easy, we would do it and do it well. There would be no need for life-coaches or devotional writers or preachers. Or a Savior, for that matter. Any discipline is hard. All the more one that leads us from mortality to eternity.
Jesus got his priorities straight from the start. Each of the gospels sets this out in a different way. In Mark, Jesus begins by preaching the Good News: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15). In John, Jesus invites the first disciples to “Come and see” and declares to Nathanael that he “will see greater things” (John 1:39; 1:50) At the Cana wedding reception when Jesus protests to his mother that his time had not yet come, she tells the servants to do whatever he says, which turned out to be “Fill the jars with water” and “draw some out” (John 2:7, 8).
In Matthew, however, prioritizing is a process. After his baptism by John, Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness. He didn’t give up one meal. He gave up forty days worth of meals. He not only gave up eating for a time, he gave up society and all the pressures that family, business, and synagogue thrust upon him. It was no vacation. He purged his life of everything he thought would distract him from arriving at the priorities that were appropriate and true and righteous for him.
Jesus chose his greatest priority. It was not about him. It was about God. The tempter used something good from God’s creation, like he did with Eve and the delicious fruit which promised all the answers (knowledge). Jesus was hungry, and Satan urged him to use his power to turn stones into bread. Bread is good and the world needs fed. Jesus didn’t deny that it was good. But Jesus did what we are unable to do. He clung to his priority and did not let the good of bread keep him from what was better. In Eugene Peterson’s rendering in The Message, Jesus said, quoting Deuteronomy, “It takes more than bread to stay alive. It takes a steady stream of words from God’s mouth.”
Rebuffed on bread, the accuser took Jesus to the top of Temple and told him, “Jump,” goading him with words from Psalm 91: “He has placed you in the care of angels. They will catch you so that you won’t so much as stub your toe on a stone” (The Message). Jesus refused, countering with another verse from Deuteronomy. Jesus would not be a daredevil abusing God’s power. It was about God’s will to be who God was rather than what people wanted God to be.
Not taking “No” for an answer, the tempter tried again. The Devil took Jesus to the tallest mountain and gave him the panorama of the kingdoms of the world. He offered all of them to Jesus, saying, “Just fall on your knees and worship me” (The Message). Once more Jesus rebuffed the Devil, declaring with a third quotation from Deuteronomy, “Worship the Lord your God, and only him. Serve him with absolute single-heartedness” (The Message).
Making priorities is not new. The first Mosaic commandment demands that we have nothing more important than God. Jesus affirmed this later on his ministry when he answered the lawyer’s question about the greatest commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:35 NRSV).
Jesus decluttered his soul of the things that would keep him from God: an over-weaning desire to do good (turn stones into bread), the public side-show spectacle that would get everyone’s attention (jumping from the top of the Temple), and the quest for human power (ruling all of the world). Jesus rejected things that were good in order to have what was better: fellowship with God and alignment with God’s purpose for creation.
What are the things that are cluttering our souls? What are the things which of themselves are good, but are still keeping us from God? Do we get so busy with time spent on committee work and volunteer schedules that we forget about the Creator who ultimately receives and blesses our labors and our attendant anxieties? Are we so busy trying to be an influencer in word and action that we forget about Jesus who broke down walls of discrimination and oppression and who deliberately associated with the outcasts of society instead of the elites? Are we so obsessed with ordering our own lives and the lives of those around us that we have neither time nor willingness to let the Spirit break into our lives in surprising and nurturing ways?
Think of all the things we are afraid of losing: our keys, our phone, our passwords. If we fear losing something valuable, we should fear losing God even more. It’s okay to love many things – our families, our work, our opinions, our successes – but we need to love God more than those. We count on many things and rely on many people, but our calling in Christ is to trust God more than anything or anyone. Satan’s strategy is always to use God’s good gifts – bread and good works, reputation and influence, human power and authority – to keep us from God.
Jesus invites us to sort through the burdens of our everyday lives and to get rid of the things in our souls that take up the space which is to be filled with God.
The Sojourners “Verse & Voice” email devotional on Friday quoted Catherine Doherty:
“Lent is a time of going very deeply into ourselves... What is it that stands between us and God? Between us and our brothers and sisters? Between us and life, the life of the Spirit? Whatever it is, let us relentlessly tear it out, without a moment’s hesitation.”
She must be channeling a spiritually aggressive Marie Kondo. Let the decluttering begin.
Coming to the Lord’s table is a regular part of the decluttering process. We come at Jesus’ invitation, not on our own initiative. We do not come to receive a seven course meal fit for a royal gourmand. We do not come to receive artisan bread and small-batch vintage wine. We come to receive Christ – Christ broken and mangled, his very life poured out for each and every one of us. This is holy space. This is decluttered space.
And for that we give thanks and praise. Amen.
(1) Emilie Griffin, Small Surrenders: A Lenten Journey.(Brewster, Massachusetts: Paraclete Press, 2007), page 9.
Matthew 4:1-11
Christian Community Presbyterian Church
Bowie, Maryland
1 March 2020
Listen to the sermon
Lent is a lot like New Year’s. Both begin the day after the night before. Mardi Gras is just a ramped-up New Year’s Eve. Instead of holding glasses of champagne and singing “Auld Lang Syne,” we eat King Cake washed down with Cajun cocktails. Both New Year’s and Lent occasion a lot of resolutions, nearly all of which quickly get broken. So, with only four Lent days behind us, has your Lenten discipline fared as well as your January get-fit resolution?
Last Sunday Dick Neff talked about giving things up or taking things on for the Lenten season. Like Dick’s friend who gave up parsnips and turnips, a child at the dinner table told her mother, “These are vegetables. You don’t want me to eat something I’ve given up for Lent, do you?”
Dick urged us to take up something new for Lent. I’m all for that, but taking on something new is easier said than done. You have to fit it into an already filled schedule. If your glass is full and you proceed to put more liquid into it, you are going to make a mess. And after you have made a mess several times, you think, why bother.
We all know our closets and drawers. They are stuffed, we can’t put anything more into them. But we want the sweater we saw at Macy’s or the shirt from Eddie Bauer. Consultants who work with hoarders say that a person has to set limits. If you buy a new sweater or a shirt, you have to get rid of an old one. It is a discipline.
So, let’s say that for Lent you decide to read the Bible thirty minutes every day. Since your days are already full, you will have to find that half hour by giving something up, perhaps by not watching “The Daily Show” or by setting a timer for how long you read your Instagram and Twitter feeds. Can you do that more than a few days in a row? If you are like me, that’s more discipline than I’m willing to give.
Whether you give up something for Lent or add something to your life, you do it in order to make room for Jesus. Lent becomes a forty-day period of soul cleaning to make space for him. That seems appropriate when we realize that we spend over 300 days a year stuffing Jesus into the dim recesses of our lives in the same way that we stuff our drawers and closets. Who of us likes to clean, who of us likes to throw things away.
Lent is a time to actively embrace the trials and sufferings of Jesus. The more we think about what he accomplished on our behalf, the more we can be effective in being true to the faith we claim. One of Dick Neff’s suggestions was to read and reread the Sermon on the Mount until it becomes a living part of who we are. When we are more effective in living faithfully, we can be more effective in sharing our faith.
Emilie Griffin, in Small Surrenders, suggests that one spiritual practice for embracing Christ’s trials and sufferings is “to reflect on the weight of our own life choices, the constraints of living that hem us in.”(1) Her thought is that instead of taking on burdens for Lent, we can be transformed by examining the burdens we already carry.
One of our burdens, says Griffin, is the everydayness of things. There are chores to be done, errands to run, text messages to answer. She cites the example of Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner. He was discouraged by the daily slog. He referred to his soul as a warehouse where burdens were dumped every day. (Think of the local self-serve mini-storage unit). Rahner says that life is a hard journey of duties and obligations. This warehouse of accumulating duties became a desert for him, a wilderness where he got lost and searched for the Lord. That’s ironic, as Rahner lived a relentless life of theological scholarship and study. He became overwhelmed to the point of losing sight of Jesus in the “warehouse” of his soul.
In our most blissful moments of conviction, we would like to be able to drop everything to be with Jesus, to share a pot of coffee or a bottle of wine with him, anything to absorb his presence into our lives. But we, like Rahner, are hemmed in by everydayness. We are tied to our work, our schedule, our obligations, our immediate community. Jesus has to come to us where we are because we will never get to where he is.
Jesus told his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering. He had to be rejected by the scribes and elders who were the religious gatekeepers of his day. He had to suffer and be put to death. Our little burdens and annoyances pale in comparison with the burdens he bore. Jesus called us to self-discipline and self-denial, yet at the same time he told us not to worry, not to be anxious, not to be afraid. It is a hard discipline for us to accept our lives with all their constraints while we seek to move with him as he takes up the cross.
If we are going to accept our burdens and deal responsibly with the everydayness of our lives which anchors us in place like a ball and chain, we have to evaluate our priorities:
- What are the most important things in our lives?
- What are the least important?
- What are the things that weigh us down needlessly?
- What are the weights that we put on ourselves unreasonably?
- And what are the things that allow us to soar?
We have heard all before, but have we really listened? Or did it just go in one ear and out the other. My father used to say that the reason we have a brain was to catch the stuff on the way between our ears.
If listening was easy, if evaluating our priorities was easy, we would do it and do it well. There would be no need for life-coaches or devotional writers or preachers. Or a Savior, for that matter. Any discipline is hard. All the more one that leads us from mortality to eternity.
Jesus got his priorities straight from the start. Each of the gospels sets this out in a different way. In Mark, Jesus begins by preaching the Good News: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15). In John, Jesus invites the first disciples to “Come and see” and declares to Nathanael that he “will see greater things” (John 1:39; 1:50) At the Cana wedding reception when Jesus protests to his mother that his time had not yet come, she tells the servants to do whatever he says, which turned out to be “Fill the jars with water” and “draw some out” (John 2:7, 8).
In Matthew, however, prioritizing is a process. After his baptism by John, Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness. He didn’t give up one meal. He gave up forty days worth of meals. He not only gave up eating for a time, he gave up society and all the pressures that family, business, and synagogue thrust upon him. It was no vacation. He purged his life of everything he thought would distract him from arriving at the priorities that were appropriate and true and righteous for him.
Jesus chose his greatest priority. It was not about him. It was about God. The tempter used something good from God’s creation, like he did with Eve and the delicious fruit which promised all the answers (knowledge). Jesus was hungry, and Satan urged him to use his power to turn stones into bread. Bread is good and the world needs fed. Jesus didn’t deny that it was good. But Jesus did what we are unable to do. He clung to his priority and did not let the good of bread keep him from what was better. In Eugene Peterson’s rendering in The Message, Jesus said, quoting Deuteronomy, “It takes more than bread to stay alive. It takes a steady stream of words from God’s mouth.”
Rebuffed on bread, the accuser took Jesus to the top of Temple and told him, “Jump,” goading him with words from Psalm 91: “He has placed you in the care of angels. They will catch you so that you won’t so much as stub your toe on a stone” (The Message). Jesus refused, countering with another verse from Deuteronomy. Jesus would not be a daredevil abusing God’s power. It was about God’s will to be who God was rather than what people wanted God to be.
Not taking “No” for an answer, the tempter tried again. The Devil took Jesus to the tallest mountain and gave him the panorama of the kingdoms of the world. He offered all of them to Jesus, saying, “Just fall on your knees and worship me” (The Message). Once more Jesus rebuffed the Devil, declaring with a third quotation from Deuteronomy, “Worship the Lord your God, and only him. Serve him with absolute single-heartedness” (The Message).
Making priorities is not new. The first Mosaic commandment demands that we have nothing more important than God. Jesus affirmed this later on his ministry when he answered the lawyer’s question about the greatest commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:35 NRSV).
Jesus decluttered his soul of the things that would keep him from God: an over-weaning desire to do good (turn stones into bread), the public side-show spectacle that would get everyone’s attention (jumping from the top of the Temple), and the quest for human power (ruling all of the world). Jesus rejected things that were good in order to have what was better: fellowship with God and alignment with God’s purpose for creation.
What are the things that are cluttering our souls? What are the things which of themselves are good, but are still keeping us from God? Do we get so busy with time spent on committee work and volunteer schedules that we forget about the Creator who ultimately receives and blesses our labors and our attendant anxieties? Are we so busy trying to be an influencer in word and action that we forget about Jesus who broke down walls of discrimination and oppression and who deliberately associated with the outcasts of society instead of the elites? Are we so obsessed with ordering our own lives and the lives of those around us that we have neither time nor willingness to let the Spirit break into our lives in surprising and nurturing ways?
Think of all the things we are afraid of losing: our keys, our phone, our passwords. If we fear losing something valuable, we should fear losing God even more. It’s okay to love many things – our families, our work, our opinions, our successes – but we need to love God more than those. We count on many things and rely on many people, but our calling in Christ is to trust God more than anything or anyone. Satan’s strategy is always to use God’s good gifts – bread and good works, reputation and influence, human power and authority – to keep us from God.
Jesus invites us to sort through the burdens of our everyday lives and to get rid of the things in our souls that take up the space which is to be filled with God.
The Sojourners “Verse & Voice” email devotional on Friday quoted Catherine Doherty:
“Lent is a time of going very deeply into ourselves... What is it that stands between us and God? Between us and our brothers and sisters? Between us and life, the life of the Spirit? Whatever it is, let us relentlessly tear it out, without a moment’s hesitation.”
She must be channeling a spiritually aggressive Marie Kondo. Let the decluttering begin.
Coming to the Lord’s table is a regular part of the decluttering process. We come at Jesus’ invitation, not on our own initiative. We do not come to receive a seven course meal fit for a royal gourmand. We do not come to receive artisan bread and small-batch vintage wine. We come to receive Christ – Christ broken and mangled, his very life poured out for each and every one of us. This is holy space. This is decluttered space.
And for that we give thanks and praise. Amen.
(1) Emilie Griffin, Small Surrenders: A Lenten Journey.(Brewster, Massachusetts: Paraclete Press, 2007), page 9.
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